Three Suspects Released Without Charge

The wife of Mohammed Siddique Khan, her brother and a third relative were released without charge yesterday. They had been arrested in connection with the 7/7 attacks. A fourth man, Khalid Khaliq is still being questioned.

The lawyer for Ms Patel told the BBC News:

Those in her community are incredibly angry at the way the police have approached this. In my view, if their intention in this case was to destroy what relations they had with the Muslim community, then they have done that.

A police spokesman pointed out that:

In all operations some people may be released early without charge while others may remain in custody for further investigation. This is not unusual and is to be expected in large and complex criminal investigations.

The Muslim leadership in Britain is directly responsible for creating a situation in which any police action involving Muslims apparently creates anger. Instead of supporting the police wholeheartedly in their difficult job of rooting out the extremists amongst the Muslim communities, the likes of MCB, MAB etc have denounced them. They have made unfounded claims of police bias against Muslims and told their communities to stop cooperating. They have tried to make the police into the enemy.

And the reason? Because the Muslim groups who are given media attention are run by Islamists and extremists. They are not representative of Muslim opinion. Channel 4's survey last year showed that only 4% of Muslims said that MCB represents them, and only 1% said it about the MAB. Yet, these groups of radicals are the ones the media goes to.

Is there really anger in the Muslim communities? To what extent? We won't really know as long as the media let the extremists tell us what is going on. The media need to stop talking to the loudest voices and assume that they are representative; they aren't. Let's start having truly representative people on the media. How about an MP or two?